For a comprehensive statement of current US Middle East policy you
can’t do better than Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs
William J. Burns’s March 17 testimony to the Senate Committee on
Foreign Relations. It’s a policy of unqualified enthusiasm for Arab
political upheavals.

There’s barely a whisper of Islamist threat, or Iranian strategic
threat, much less the Syrian regime’s radicalism or that of Hamas and
Hezbollah. Instead, we get rhetoric about these “spontaneous”
revolutions by those who want “better governance and more economic
opportunities...

intent upon erasing the disconnect between the rulers and the ruled.”

And what is the worldview of this “peaceful, homegrown, non-
ideological movement”? Simply, “the universal values that the
president spoke about two years ago in Cairo – the right of peaceful
assembly, freedom of speech and the right to determine one’s own
destiny.”

There is, of course, much truth in this assessment. But it’s only
part of the picture.

Burns adds that this movement “offers a powerful repudiation of al-
Qaida’s false narrative that violence and extremism are the only ways
to effect change.”

Yet it offers a powerful confirmation of the narrative of the
Egyptian and Jordanian Muslim Brotherhoods, as well as the political
strategies of Hamas, Hezbollah and Turkey’s Islamist regime: that
mass organization and elections can affect change toward Islamist
dictatorships.

After all, at this very moment, Hamas runs Gaza, Hezbollah and its
allies run Lebanon, and a stealth Islamist regime rules Turkey based
on such tactics. In Egypt, nationalists and democrats have been
panicking, claiming proposed election rules would produce a Muslim
Brotherhood triumph.

The new policy goes even further, announcing that fears of radical
Islamism were just phony rationales used by regimes friendly to the
West: “The long-held conceit of many Arab leaders was that there were
really only two political choices – the autocrats you know or the
Islamic extremists you fear. That provided a convenient rationale for
blocking real political outlets or broadened participation, and it
ultimately produced the spontaneous combustion of Tahrir Square.”

Actually we don’t know yet if those Arab leaders were wrong, do we?
But note the key phrase: Unless the political systems are opened up,
US policy argues, all the non-Islamist regimes will be overthrown
anyway. So the US better push to transform them.

Imagine you’re a Saudi or Jordanian leader, reading this. You’d say:
You think “Islamic extremists” are a mirage? You think Iran’s threat
is a conceit? You’re throwing us under the bus! Let’s get real: The
revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt succeeded not because of Facebook
but because the armies supported them. They failed in Iran, Syria,
Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and elsewhere because the security
forces supported the regime. In other words, those who ignore
American advice and are most ruthless will stay in power. Radical
anti-American regimes have the fewest worries.

HERE’S THE administration’s new philosophy: “Political systems and
leaderships that fail to respond to the legitimate aspirations of
their people become more brittle, not more stable. Popular pressures
to realize universal values will take different shapes in different
societies, but no society is immune from them. Political systems are
a little like bicycles – unless they’re pedaled forward, they tend to
fall over.”

In other words, a basic change in Arab politics is an absolute
necessity. Either US policy helps transform these regimes or
the “people” will do so. Thus, the Obama administration must tear
down existing governments, believing that the result will be an
improvement.

Or, in the words of Burns’s testimony: “It is in our long-term
interest to support the emergence of more transparent and more
responsive governments, who will ultimately make stronger and more
stable partners...”

Yet while he admits that “the shortterm is likely to be pretty
complicated and unsettling” Burns is basically saying that nothing
can go wrong.

In other words, the region can go “back” to a Mubarak-style regime.

How about not “retrenchment” but something new, you know, like in
Iran in 1979. A bold new authoritarianism? He does mention
how “predatory extremists” might take advantage of the situation, as
if Islamists are burglars rather than movements with a powerful
ideology and mass base.

Burns points to “economic stagnation,” and failure to improve
people’s lives as factors which might allow these unnamed extremists
to take over.

Burns makes solving these problems sound easy. I think doing so is
impossible, and the Obama administration’s programs for helping make
poor Arab countries rich are a joke. For example, he states: “We can
help produce private-sector jobs desperately needed to keep pace with
demography and expectations.”

You mean like Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon?
Might “uncomfortable results” include throwing out US bases,
sponsoring terrorism, fomenting wars, promoting hysterical anti-
Americanism? Finally and worst of all, there’s no mention of
supporting democratic movements against the Syrian, Iranian and Hamas
regimes.

So here we have the Obama administration’s policy: overthrow or
significantly weaken relatively moderate Arab regimes
through “serious political reform” and dialogue with opposition
leaders. Does this mean pushing Jordan’s king to talk with the Muslim
Brotherhood and US support for PA concessions to Hamas? Meanwhile,
the administration sees no contradiction between this strategy and
continued engagement with Syria, the most repressive Arab
dictatorship of all, and bowing to its near-takeover of Lebanon.

Equally, it sees no contradiction in largely ignoring the most
democratic forces of all: the oppositions in Iran, Turkey and Lebanon.

A lot of observers have missed the key point: The Obama
administration is not abandoning Israel or pressing it toward
suicidal concessions. Rather, it’s now treating the shrinking list of
relatively moderate, anti-Islamist, anti-Iranian states like it has
treated Israel.

In the very last paragraph of the speech, as an afterthought, Burns
mentions such things as “strengthening ties to the GCC states...
fighting terrorism... [and] preventing Iran from developing nuclear
weapons and setting off a catastrophic regional arms race.”